Tales of the TIE Pilot
by lord natahan
Summary: A collection of short stories featuring an OC TIE Interceptor pilot named Fritz Kaidem. Just one to begin with for now, I'll add more as I recieve reviews and feedback.


**Squadron 57**

"_TIE Squadron 57, all units report status. Over."_ An officer's voice crackled over the comlink. "DS-63-05 all systems operational. Over." "DS-48-24 all systems operational. Over." "DS-25-97 all systems operational. Over." And so the rest of the twelve fighter squadron of TIE Interceptor pilots reported their TIE's operational status to me, their commanding officer, Fritz Kaidem. "All fighters are operational sir. Over." I reported back to the flight controller. _"You are go for take-off Squadron 57, prepare for launch. Over."_ As the comlink crackled and fell silent, the Star Destroyer's TIE rack cycled us toward the hanger bay's gaping maw and towards the inky blackness of space. My row of fighters came up first and I geared myself for the deployment. I felt and heard the shudder of the holding claws stopping and then a momentary delay before I was dropped straight down and then put into a state of weightlessness, held in place by only my restraints. The gut-churning feeling of being dropped straight down and then having it stop so suddenly would cause most beings to wretch or even pass out, but I and my peers had been conditioned to resist it, and this was just part of our combination of superb training, excellent piloting skills, suicidal bravery, and unwavering loyalty to His Royal Majesty The Emperor that made us one of the pillars of Imperial might. I edged forward into the head of a formation with the three other Interceptors deployed alongside me and we began to circle the hanger, each pass adding four more TIE's to our squadron until we had acquired our full strength of twelve fighters and made one additional pass to triple check the all systems were go. When all things were in order, I headed a wedge formation that was heading planet side to the rebellious world the Empire was suppressing.

As we left the hulking, triangular mass of the star destroyer behind us, I could see what the initial attack by the cruisers had done to whatever defense the local rebel cell could manage. The molten remains of many fighters were floating through space, though any recognizable pieces of the original ships had been obliterated by our turbolasers. I could see the drifting, blown out hull of what once was a civilian satellite station the rebels had modified with weapons. The destroyer's weapons had made short work of it, and now all that was left was a mangled collection of red hot metal and charred parts. As we approached the planet, I recalled the briefing we had received beforehand. This planet was a critical storage area for the Rebel Alliance's supply of Tibanna gas, crucial to the operation of blaster-based weaponry. Recent intel received had said that the Rebels planned on moving soon but had discovered the Empires plan to launch a surprise raid because the Imperial spy implanted had recently been discovered by the rebels. As I could see for myself now, the rebels had built a ray shield that was preventing them from simply leveling the city and an anti-missile defense grid that was shooting down all of their missiles so now it was the TIE's duty to get inside the shield and escort TIE bombers to destroy the generator alongside all of the other TIE squadrons that had joined us from the other capitol ships.

All of the remaining rebel starfighters had retreated inside of the shield though it still made me nervous having to decelerate in order to enter the atmosphere because I was an Interceptor pilot and was accustomed to being faster and more nimble than almost anything else in the galaxy. Being slow made me nervous more than being under the worst of enemy fire. We had to decelerate even more now that we were passing through the enemy shield, and once we passed through the shield, we would be under heavy fire. We made it through the shield and the hail of anti-aircraft fire began and immediately destroyed three of our number. We split up into three groups of three and brought our speed back up and hurtled towards the enemy. The plan was to clear a path through the enemy anti-aircraft guns for the bombers to the shield generator and then circle back around to escort said bombers against the few enemy fighters.

My trio of fighters sped away from the other two groups and we came up fast on our first target, a gun emplacement on a bridge. The gun was deadly to craft that it could catch in its sights, but then again it had only caught my wingmen when we were slower. We easily dodged and sped our way past the guns fire as it came into our guns range. I took aim at the ammunition supply and fired a burst from my cannons, causing the ammo supply to explode and destroy the gun, crew and all. It also rocked the bridge with the force of the massive explosion, causing it to collapse from the damage. We soared through the smoke and sighted our next target, located on top of an old warehouse. The gun shot of another load of flak at us and clipped the solar panel of my left wingman, causing his craft to start a death spin as his twin ion engine whined and squealed like a dying animal. He knew he was going to die so he did what was expected of him and crashed his dying craft into the enemy gun, obliterating it in a brilliant, orange fireball. His new widow would receive the proper honors as her husband had done his duty and sacrificed himself in the name of the Emperor, so it was no concern of mine. Just a means to an end. It didn't do any TIE pilots any good to get attached to your peers.

My remaining wingman and I flew on towards our goal regardless of our losses. We are an elite force, and we are numerous. We sighted no more enemy guns on our way to the generator so we circled back around to rendezvous with our assigned bombers, though to me and my peers it more or less seemed like baby-sitting the big, fat, slow bombers. The bomber jocks were also spoiled in my eyes because they got a plentiful supply of air in their craft and didn't even have to wear the large and clunky helmets that I had to wear, their helmets were open. My jealousy aside, it was still my duty to keep more nimble craft off of their backs so they could do their job.

As we turned around, two Y-wings led by an X-wing broke off from the main force guarding the generator and gave chase to us. Though their craft were far more durable than ours, we still had the advantage in speed and agility, which was mine and any other TIE pilot's only protection. Our training had prepared us to not even need to use verbal commands, we were all trained to be bloodthirsty and suicidal in our methods, and so we all thought alike. My wingman and I did a sudden upward arc and were behind our enemy in an instant, but before the sluggish Y-wings had a chance to evade, my cannons tore into the left engine of one Y-wing, causing it to spiral and crash into the city streets below while my partner blew off the rear ion cannon on the other Y-wing. The X-wing broke off to engage me individually while my wingman kept the remaining Y-wing busy. We made many attempts at trying to flank one another, with him getting his cannons in range before I could, but my much more nimble craft keeping me from being blown to pieces. We finally spilt off from our little dance and circled around to fly towards one another in a deadly game of chicken. His longer range cannons came close to blowing me apart several times but I squeezed off several shots at him just before I pulled up and over him, my shots tearing up on of his wings and scraping up his nose pretty bad as well as blowing apart one of his engines. His wounded craft made a pitiful attempt at turning around to face me once more but it was of no use as I had already gotten behind him and fired directly into his rear, causing his craft to rupture into fire and shrapnel. My partner was still dealing with his opponent, the Y-wings shields the only thing keeping it alive by this point. I flew over to assist and flew at it from the side, blowing apart his nose and then finishing him off with another burst directly into his side, blowing him apart. Our obstacle cleared, we continued on our way to escort our bombers.

The ride to the bombers was peaceful enough, as peaceful as a warzone could be anyway, without us being fired upon by the enemy, who was most likely still occupied with the other TIE squadrons that had been a part of the attack. My partner and I took up flanking positions on either side of the bombers, joined by the three other remaining fighters from my squadron, and we went on our now safe route with the bombers.

As we made our approach to the generator, I could see that it was now a warzone, with fighters shooting at one another in vicious dogfights like giant metal hornets with the occasional fireball marking someone winning an individual victory. Several other bomber squadrons and their escorts had now arrived as well, a triumph of Imperial coordination. Most of the rebels were otherwise engaged and could pay little attention to the now encroaching bombers. It seemed almost too easy as just one bombers ordinance could destroy the generator, but any hopes of an easy win were quickly dashed by the arrival of a trio of A-wings at the far left of the battlefield. The speedy little flying wedges were the rebel's best achievement against the Imperial TIEs, being even faster than the Interceptors. The bomber group that they were charging towards was guarded by only normal TIE fighters, and the three out of the four that broke off to engage the A-wings were rather easily obliterated, the two bombers following suit, the A-wing pilots being extremely good at their job. As they began to head towards our group, the fourth TIE managed to get close enough behind one to one of them to hit one, the fragile rebel craft instantly erupting into a fireball. The two remaining A-wings reversed their cannons and blew apart the pursuing TIE. A-wings have the infuriating ability to turn their guns around and fire on those who pursue them.

Two of my group remained behind to continue to guard the bombers while I led the other two to face the new threat. The initial meeting of laser fire resulted in the destruction of one Interceptor while one A-wing was destroyed just after it had blew apart another Interceptor with a missile, leaving just me and the remaining A-wing. It seemed as if I would actually have a challenge this time but instead my opponent turned tail and fled as fast as he could, firing his lasers at me in their reverse position the whole time I was chasing him. It was actually quite difficult to dodge his shots, considering that A-wings were flown by only the most capable rebel pilots, and also given how fragile and cramped the tiny craft were. We spent a good while in this chase, his cannons scraping my craft a few time and me actually getting a few shots off, none of them hitting their mark until I finally clipped his left engine's maneuvering fin, a crippling blow to a ship in an atmosphere. It's ability to maneuver now gone, it plummeted to the ground, the pilot ejecting at the last second, though it wasn't that difficult to blow holes into his parachute, causing him to plummet to his death as well.

I flew back around and saw the bombers launch their payload into the shield generator, the generator's structure bulging out for a spilt second before blowing apart into a satisfyingly large explosion. I gave a small and rare smile underneath my faceplate, because as a TIE pilot, one of my few joys was the thrill of the hunt and the kill. The large dome of the ray shield flickered and dissipated and then disappeared. The flight commander's voice crackled over my comlink and said, _"All fighters return to the fleet and screen for any rebels attempting to escape. The fleet will begin bombardment in one minute. Over."_ All of our fighters stopped whatever it was they were doing and pulled up and began the retreat from the now doomed city.

As I retreated with the other Imperial craft out of the Star Destroyer's deadly aim, a Y-wing pulled out from behind a large building, and as I briefly pondered why it would be there, it's ion cannon began to fire, not hitting any of the nimble TIE's simply ignoring it to escape the soon to be dead city, but it did manage to hit a bomber a good distance in front of me in its firing. I knew well how dangerous its ordinance would be if it were to go off when it crashed, so I instinctively pulled sharply up, and my fellow pilots followed suit, most likely seeing the danger the same as me. I didn't even see or hear the paralyzed craft as it fell to the streets below, I didn't need to, and the massive explosion was confirmation of my prediction. I did however hear the collapsing of several nearby buildings from the force of the explosion. The damage done just now would be completely inconsequential to the damage done by our turbolasers, so it mattered little anyway.

As I flew with my one remaining wingman, I saw the bright green bolts of plasma fly from the Star Destroyers turbolasers and turn the ground on the planet below into a fiery, molten Hell. I could see that the planet would most likely be recovering for generations to come just from the environmental damage alone, and softly smiled to myself once more satisfied that these rebel scumbags had gotten what they had deserved for defying the will of The Emperor.

* * *

It's been a while since I have written anything for an audience, and I've recently gotten back ito what got me into writing in the first place, Star Wars. I'd love it if you could leave a review featuring any thoughts on the story, constructive critisism, or even ideas for future stories about the character.

Thanks for reading,

Lord~Natahan


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